Nearly a third of marketers (32%) say they struggle to find trained content marketing professionals, according to the 2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends – North America . That ‘s three times more than those who cited it as a challenge in 2014.
Not only are talented content marketing professionals hard to find, it can also be difficult to know what to look for when hiring someone. The skill set can be diverse and often isn’t sufficiently defined by a particular organization or content marketing team, making a successful search more difficult.
What skills should be on your team’s must-have list? The leading content marketing experts presenting at Content Marketing World 2015 share what they put at the top.
Dig into the data
We need to find the people who can translate the data to tell a story. Too often, companies make decisions on unimportant metrics or metrics they measure without success.
To separate the signal from the noise, you need to find the people who understand what the data is telling them and can translate it to the leaders who fund your budgets and make decisions.
Ahava Leibtag , Chairman and Founder, Aha Media Group | @ahaval
Say and think
Exceptional storytellers and strategic thinkers are india telegram indispensable. I work for a media company, and we’re in the storytelling business. If you’re part of our team, we need you to think strategically about brand partnerships, whether you’re on the creative or management side. I can teach content marketing, but I can’t teach this. Oh, and being meticulous …yeah, that too!
Arestia Rosenberg , Creative Director of Brand Strategy, The Daily Beast | @arestiaR
Look for trained journalists
People in journalism already know that success requires a constant focus on telling stories that audiences want to hear. Plus, most have honed the skills to ask people to talk about a topic, listen carefully, and follow up with great probing questions. This makes them ideal candidates for interviewing buyers about decisions the company wants to influence and creating buyer personas.
Adele Revella , CEO, Buyer Persona Institute, @buyerpersona
Don’t forget project management
Among the skills on my list are managing and organizing projects. A strong content program means LOTS of projects and variety. It can be difficult to manage multiple projects with many contributors, media, reviews, approvals, edits, and a ton of collaboration. Content marketers need to be extremely well organized and have strong project management skills to keep everything running on time and on budget. Strong project management also allows you to be flexible to adapt to inevitable schedule changes.
Brian Kardon , Chief Marketing Officer, Lattice Engines | @bkardon
Make it personal
I’m particularly looking for people who “create” for themselves, not just for work. If they’re creating content or building technology for themselves, that means they’re experimenting and exploring because they care. If they’re only doing it because it’s necessary for the job, they might not like it enough to be successful on my team.
I want doers and doers. The skills that come Cambodia Phone Number List out of that are the kinds of skills I’m currently looking for. I want people who can open a webpage, app, or blog and tell me how they did it, what they learned from it, and how it will help us achieve our goals.
